Geek Anachronism

I am kind of terrible at blogging now. Or most social media. It's just a storm of reblogs and pictures of Bunbun.

Anyway.

My studies are going well, for a given value of 'well' which entails only really working at 40% capacity (because Bunbun! house! stuff!) yet still being requested to do my 6 month milestone in 3 months instead. So that's been a nice bit of anxiety on top of going to Continuum (fun! interesting! but also five days away and complicated by sudden changes in where I was sleeping! I blogged about it at my pseudo-blog). The draft should go in tomorrow and then I'll flail into a panic attack.

Bunbun is half way through the kindy year. We had some issues early on - it turns out she didn't go to her teachers if she felt unhappy/unsafe because she thought they would smack the other kids (...thank you for that lesson in-laws, that's awesome) so she just bottled it up until I finally talked to her about it and worked out what was happening. Stupid fucking interpersonal bossy shit from the daughters of the queenbee fusspots, which feels awful and judgemental to say but it didn't surprise me any that the kids who were pushing Bunbun around (not physically, or at least not much, mostly emotionally/socially) were the kids of the mums (...always mums) who turn up in makeup and coiffed hair and talk about the businesses they run and own and so on, and who pull the same shit on other parents as well.

I've absolutely murdered some conversations with them by neither hiding nor being ashamed of Bunbun going to the local public school.

I mean, Bunbun was mostly really worried about why these kids were dicks, and that they would get in trouble. But it sucks, y'know, and I hate it. But, nonetheless, she still requested a partially shaved head like her aunt, and is now really open with her teachers, so I'm at ease.

Except I found out today that the parents of the ...rambunctious... boys in her class are all set to complain because our teacher isn't doing words and letters and time and numbers and skeletons and shit with the kids. Dontchaknow that's why their kids are acting up? They're bored?

Fuck that stupid fucking trope. Really. These kids have totally open time - if they want to write, they can, or art, or play with boats or rocks or the time. They aren't relegated to the babies room or anything. It's not my kid's fault you kept your kid back because "oh they weren't ready" and "boys mature later" and now you're wanting kindy to be prep. They are FOUR. FOUR FUCKING YEARS OLD. Oh wait, no, your kid is five and seems to think he doesn't have to listen to women and that it's boring to do something inside, or quiet, or not in front of an audience.

I don't really know why it has upset me the way it has, but it feels like the teachers could have had a lot more time to spend with my quiet kid if they weren't dealing with mini-Adam Sandlers. I mean, Bunbun has a lot more word/letter recognition, social understanding, emotional engagement, but their kids are boooooooooooored so therefore advanced therefore more lesson-style learning will fix it? Who the fuck expects school to help a kid's behaviour? Really?

So. That's my rant.

I have a supervisor for the PhD, now all I need to do is the application.

(topic: rule 63, how fandom rejecte/reinforces femininity)

(FREAKING. OUT)

(at least it doesn't add to the HECS debt, since the government pays. They won't pay the home loan though.)

(also, both of us are still unemployed. And I'm still have fewer panic attacks than before.)

I quit my job.

Two weeks to go. My boss is having a sudden attack of nice.

I don't have a job lined up.

I'm still having fewer panic attacks than before.

I go back monday. I've negotiated a "graduated return to work". After and excruciating call to the manager. So I go 2 days, then 3, and so on.

I am so far beyond okay.

Then I read apocalyptic shit about the environment and it just all seems so fucking futile. So I eat until it hurts, just a bit. Then I cry listening to Neil Gaiman talk about the future and I just want to die. Not because I'll never be a writer or famous but because I just can't see the future enough to even work out where I want to be.

And for all this I'm so fucking sick of myself. I own a fucking house. My husband can work, and is applying and will get a job and fuck. Why can't I just be happy?

Coming back to Melbourne for a visit has pretty comprehensively made me want to move back here.

Looking at the job postings makes it even better.

Te library industry in Brisbane is eating itself. All contract and temp work, or hiring the incumbent anyway, after the interview process. Asking people to write their own selection criteria so you get junk like "knows the university's needs" which is presumably something one learns on the job. Unless you only hire internal. And the only way to become internal is either three month part-time contracts or, rarely, casual work. The pay scales are fucking obnoxious too - $70k for a library sysadmin for the second biggest library network in the state? That's just stupid. $55k for cond in command at a massive branch with 20 staff? No wonder you weren't requesting a degree with either of those, then you'd have to go with real payscales, not this secondary earner bullshit.

Which is fine if you assume all librarians are older women with partners who are major breadwinners. I can't take a three month contract to get out of my current job - not with a mortgage. I can't do it. i can't drop my ge so significantly.

But, I also can't keep doing this.

I think we're going to sell the house. I don't know about moving to Melbourne again, but I think we need to get off this crazy making thing of owning a house. We're thirty, why are we doing this to ourselves?

stupid mistake, driving tired and apparently with asymptomatic but worryingly low blood sugar. I thought I had an arrow, but I should have given way. Ripped away most of the engine, the radiator was leaning on the wheel when I got out. I had some spinal and abdominal symptoms but they went away and a CT cleared me so it's just the bruised chest wall now. And the burst blood vessels from the blood pressure cuff, a bruised elbow where it hit the steering wheel and a truly borked cannula site (apparently the first one since med school and I could feel him shaking as he did it).

I am so sore, and shaken. I do alright til I think of the empty car seat and how most days Bunbun would have been there as well. I don't think it would have happened if Wolfman was driving, but the very idea terrifies me. Apparently it worried the cops too, coming in to an empty car seat and an ambulance heading off with a not entirely coherent female driver.

I feel so bad. I wiped out our (only) car. I have no idea how much it will cost. We are insured, and the medical care didn't cost anything (I thought of that in the interminable four hours waiting for the all clear, staring at the ceiling in the neck brace). Nobody was seriously hurt, they weren't fancy cars, but I feel bad. We are borrowing a car from my parents, we aren't even that inconvenienced. But I feel awful. I joked this week that I kind of feel like those women who wish for a car accident so they can go to hospital and actually rest, except I want a car crash to avoid work. Then I have one. Fucking tempting fate bullshit.

But yeah, I broke my car.

My sister-in-law's son was just diagnosed with Cerebral Palsy. He's nearly 2.

We just thought he was a bit delayed and low tone.

I don't know what to do to support her.